The Goddess Kamakshi prevails in the form of Shakti. There are 51 Shakti Peetas across the country. The Goddess residing place in Kanchi is called as “Nabisthana Ottiyana Peetam”. The Goddess is called as “Sri Kamakshi”. The word is derived from the heritage of “Ka” means Goddess Saraswati (God of Education), “Ma” means Goddess Lakshmi (God of Wealth), “Akshi” means Eye. In Kanchi the God lives with Goddess Sarawathi and Lakshmi as Her both eyes. The Lalitha Saharanama poem is an ideal example for the goddess power.

“Sachamara Ramavani Savya Dakshina Sevitha”

Kanchi is also called as Satyavrita Kshetra. The Goddess worshipped Lord Siva by creating a mud idol in Kanchi. At that moment, Lord Siva incarnated as Kamba River and with high tides tested the worship of the goddess. The goddess grasped the idol closely with her two hands from eroding in the tides. This prevented the idol from getting eroded in the floods. The goddess also performed Pooja by sitting in a needle tip surrounded by “Panchakagni”(surrounded by 5 fires) to free herself from the interest of livelihood. The Lord Shiva became happy and married the goddess. Though there are many Shiva temples in the city, the only temple to have the sanctorum of the goddess is ‘SRI KAMAKSHI AMMAN TEMPLE’.

The place where goddess resides is “ Gayatri Mandapam”. The Goddess lives in temple in 3 forms. They are Sri Kamakshi, Sri Bilahasam and Sri Chakram. The goddess is in a sitting posture of “Padmasana”. The goddess has Pasa, angusa, Pushpabana and Sugarcane in her forehands.

The temple sanctorum consists of a deity “Adivaraha Perumal” which is one of the 108 Vaishnaivaite temples.

The temple was visited by a dumb devotee named “Mookan”. The devotee begged the goddess to free him from this dumbness so that he could sing hymns in praise of the goddess. The goddess suddenly provides him grace by freeing him from dumbness and giving him the ability to create poetry. Being immensely delighted he wrote the hymn “Mookapanchashati” in which he praises the beauty of goddess.

The Saint Adisankara born at Kaladi in Kerala travelled across all the parts of the country. When he visited Kanchipuram he felt the goddess was in a ferocious mood and so the entire sanctorum was very hot. So to bring the Goddess to the normal state the saint sang songs in praise of the Goddess, the “Soundarya Lahari”. Then he established a Sri Chakra in front of her idol to keep the Goddess cool. This Srichakram is visible to all of us and all the poojas are done to srichakram too. The Saint established Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam and attained Sarvagyna peetam in this holy city.

With the blessings of Almighty and Shakti we have taken a few incidents from the history of Kanchipuram and Kamakshi. We have tried to project the same through Dance Drama.

May our children be showered with HIS Grace.

25th January 2014

This year the theme was “Karuna Vilasini Kanchi Nivasini”. Around 500 students came on stage.